In 2009 a writer was fired for making what was considered an antiSemitic statement after he refused to apologize. He was also prosecuted under French law.

From the Telegraph:
French cartoonist Sine on trial on charges of anti-Semitism over Sarkozy jibe
A Left-wing cartoonist is to go on trial on Tuesday on charges of anti-Semitism for suggesting Jean Sarkozy, the son of the French president, was converting to Judaism for financial reasons.
By Henry Samuel in Paris
6:00AM GMT 27 Jan 2009
Maurice Sinet, 80, who works under the pen name Sine, faces charges of "inciting racial hatred" for a column he wrote last July in the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The piece sparked a summer slanging match among the Parisian intelligentsia and ended in his dismissal from the magazine.
"L'affaire Sine" followed the engagement of Mr Sarkozy, 22, to Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of an electronic goods chain. Commenting on an unfounded rumour that the president's son planned to convert to Judaism, Sine quipped: "He'll go a long way in life, that little lad."
A high-profile political commentator slammed the column as linking prejudice about Jews and social success. Charlie Hebdo's editor, Philippe Val, asked Sinet to apologise but he refused, exclaiming: "I'd rather cut my balls off."
Mr Val's decision to fire Sine was backed by a group of eminent intellectuals, including the philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy, but parts of the libertarian Left defended him, citing the right to free speech.
Last week, the anti-capitalist, anti-clerical Sine, who recently founded his own weekly magazine, Sine Hebdo, took Claude Askolovitch, the journalist who first accused him of anti-Semitism, to court for slander in a separate case.
"When I heard that I was being treated as anti-Semitic, my blood ran cold," he said during the trial, adding that if Mr Askolovitch had turned up in person, "it is not a trial he would have had but a head butt."
Sine is the defendant in Tuesday's court case in Lyon, southern France. The plaintiff is the anti-racism and anti-Semitism group, Licra.
The issue of anti-Semitism, already sensitive in a country still marked by the Alfred Dreyfus affair - the Jewish army captain wrongly accused of spying in the 19th century – has become even more charged in recent weeks due to Israel's Gaza offensive; France was hit by a series of anti-Semitic acts, including firebomb attacks on synagogues.
The young Mr Sarkozy, who is now the leader of his father's party in the president's old fiefdom, the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, has since married. He has denied converting to Judaism.

If the Palestinians can be blamed for the Nakba is Mr. Cohen also willing to accede the reciprocal and accept that Jews were responsible for the various instances in history when Jews were thrown out of nations?

The Israeli government presents itself as the Jewish homeland and representative of Judaism. Many people actually believe it.

As an American who protested the war in Iraq I don't believe I personally have "blood on my hands" for the fiasco of our our invasion. I do not back our bloody meddling in Latin America or the rest of the world.

But I certainly understand when I have been confronted by foreigners who accuse Americans of "having blood on their hands" that I share a certain inferred guilt in their minds.

It is not their bigotry that leads them to draw such a broad generality. It is the bigotry of some many Americans beginning with our leadership that promotes such conclusions.

It is not the United States of America but specific people. The people who fund the lobbying groups, the think tanks fund the political parties and campaigns, underwrite the activists, fund the websites and promote their pseudo journalism.

The lies being spun in Washington and in the media are not the workings of a free and open press or of a vibrant democracy. It is the manipulations of a very few people with a specific agenda.

The most egregious should be held responsible for crimes against humanity though perhaps little framework exists to prosecute them.

It used to be expected that more educated people were held to a higher standard.

We apparently have become a more egalitarian state where there is no distinction between someone with a doctorate in medicine and a semiliterate bigot who spills his hateful bile from the door of his trailer home.

Whenever I read Chomsky he refers to the United States as though it is a huge monolith as he does here.

American policy to Israel and the Palestinians are dictated by specific people it's not Americans views or even AIPAC that controls to message and the policy.

It is a few extremely wealthy and influential people like Paul Singer, Sheldon Adelson and Hiam Saban. These people fund the think tanks, the lobbying groups and finance the candidates. Chomsky never names them.

When the question is framed in "Jews" as opposed to "Some Jews" or "Many Jews" how are you expected to get a response that doesn't stereotype?

When the LA Times runs a article about Jews being genetically predisposed to being smarter on the front page as they did a few years ago (without any scientific proof) and the piece becomes one of the most shared stories, is it fair to respond that some Jews believe this stuff?

When the question is "Do Jews think they are superior?" Certainly some do, but the question offers no quantification. If it as if all Jews shared the same negative characteristics you would have a clear basis for measuring antisemitism.

If only Hillary Clinton could get the same deserved approbation as Condolezza Rice the prospects for the next election might give us more to cheer about.

Watching her protege Victoria Nuland handing out neocon cookies in Ukraine is enough to convince me that Hillary would find a place for like thinking and morally compromised Condi in her administration.

"I see a need to transform that Jewish presence, to embrace Palestinian human rights the same way we support civil rights here."

Perceiving Jews as uniformly supporting civil rights here ignores the fact that there were many Jews on the other side of the civil rights issue. There were Jewish storeowners in the South who supported, participated and profited from Jim Crow too.

I am always reminded of the observation a Iraq veteran friend made when viewing pictures of the missiles recovered from Sderot.

If they had been the sophisticated weapons often described there wouldn't be the big pieces left as they would have been blasted to pieces during the explosion at impact. The fact that such large pieces are recovered makes the case that there may have been no warhead in the first place. That observation is confirmed by the photographs of the damage done which is usually a hole in the roof of a building. If there were a warhead there would be no building. The rusting remains of the missiles suggest they were fashioned out of plumbing pipe not something manufactured at an armaments factory..

These are not offensive military weapons like the IDF routinely use. They are primitive weapons that are symbolic acts of defiance.

How can this administration entertain releasing Pollard who personally benefited from his actions and still pursue Edward Snowden who received no money and acted out of his sense of conscience for the principles codified in the Constitution?

By illiterate you mean that Christians were primitive, irrational and therefore wrong and readily dismissed. It is not the accused but the accuser who is to blame.

Conversely people who are literate and follow an ancient myth of creation are always moral, never subject to the excesses of religious zealotry as we can clearly infer from the current state of relations between the most moral army in the world and the illiterate, irrational Palestinians.

Except the Palestinian literacy rate is about equal to Israel.

Would Ariel Sharon, Benjamin Netanyahu or an IDF soldier who patrols the West Bank by virtue of their literacy have been humane people had they lived in medieval times or would they have pushed the envelop of behavior to indulge in their own power and lust even if it crossed the moral boundaries of behavior?

Jews during the medieval period held a special and powerful position relative to the illiterate Christian serfs. They answered to the sovereign who granted special laws exempting them from local courts. Is it possible that some indulged in behavior that reflected on the entire Jewish community?

“Contrary to assertions from some parties, SJP leaders have not been banned permanently from participation,[lots of things are temporary, life for example.]

“Further, reports that expulsion procedures have been initiated against students affiliated with SJP are false.” [We discussed this in private are waiting for some extraneous excuse so as to mask our true motivation.]

The issue here is not one of free speech or the exchange of disparate ideas. [Speaks for itself.]

I read in a biography of George C. Marshall years ago that in 1944, Claude Pepper had introduced a bill to Congress to recognize a Jewish State in Palestine. Marshall interceded to block it as it would be detrimental to the war effort.

That predates Truman and frames the Zionist efforts a little differently.

You pick your battles. Penn is not endorsing the occupation or Netanyahu (at least the article doesn't make that clear. I am not aware of him taking a stand either pro Israel or against Palestinians. He is being honored for working to release a single individual.

Sean Penn still has my respect for what he has done in Haiti. Not a short PR trip like Israel did sending doctors to get photographed and then sent home. He has been there selflessly trying to help a desperate and oppressed people.

Now should Gilbert Bigio the Haitian billionaire show up to sing his praises all bets are off.

How would burning my music effect Neil Young? He's already made his money off of me. Whether I burn it in the street or just don't play it anymore doesn't make a difference to him. My neighbors however will think I'm a bit touched if I burn a bunch of plastic in front of the house.

Makes me recall reading Theodore White's autobiography where he talks about the first time he at pork at a function where it would have been awkward to turn down his guest's offering. He then at pork the rest of his life.

Turning down a person's offering of food probably set a icy tone for the conversation. He probably didn't have to call him a "bazaar" to his face and I'm sure his rejection of his food was only one of his signals to convey his contempt.

Davie Zirin wrote in "The Nation" that this team under this name was started in 1920.

The homeland of the Palestinians in 1920 very much looked like what they have depicted on their jerseys. They certainly have a historical right to portray it as much as a Sicilian a depiction of the island of their ancestry.

If Palestine is a fiction and that somehow delegitimizes the rights of the "Palestinians" what does that say about the Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the African states that were arbitrarily divided up by the Europeans, the United States and the rest of the Americas?

It seems the criteria for delegitimizing the Palestinians could be used to delegitimizing most any nation or people. It's a hollow argument that I would have thought disregarded long ago.

The area was under Ottoman rule and included a varied community of Muslims, Christians and Jews. It would seem Zionism shaped the identity of the remainder of the people when the Jews living there were swept up in the colonial endeavor.

Howard Zinn noted in his "People's History" that the difference in wages between free Southern labor and slaves was minimal.

In the "Untold History of Labor" the case is made that the civil war was sparked by the immigrants after the European revolutions of 1848. Who saw slavery as an obstacle to a living wage. The Irish may not have seen slavery as their fight but the Germans in Wisconsin did and signed up in large numbers.

Today slavery is off shored to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia. We just don't call it slavery. Just like we didn't call the massacre of the Native Americans a genocide.

Reminds me of the two weeks or so the Israeli government sent a medical team to Haiti for earthquake relief. It made the American media, heartwarming tales of humanity staged on billionaire Gilbert Bigio's property.

I don't think "The Passion" qualifies as Hollywood film. Gibson funded it himself and picked up all the profits when Hollywood backed away and attacked it, creating a huge buzz for the movie in the process.

Are you suggesting that Hollywood is controlled not by Jews but rather by Jewish men

Let the people who support the lobbying efforts, the coercion and corruption of the political system in regards to Israel/Palestine. Rather saddle the entire nation with the burden of unwinding the misdeeds of a few, let those specifically responsible for it and who benefitted from it shoulder the burden.

Our legal system doesn't allow these people to be brought to court for their actions, though clearly they break the spirit of any sense of justice.

Hopefully in some point in the future our times will be viewed as a dark age of justice.

Looking at some of the "missile" parts I was struck by how crude most of them are. The impact often shows no explosion because they lack a warhead. Their targets are frequently Israeli towns only a couple of miles away from the border.

How many millions are being spent to protect Israelis from what more often than not something little more than the rockets hobbyists fire anywhere else in the world?

May the spirit of Mario Savio live on at Berkeley and throughout the country:

“There's a time when the
operation of the machine becomes
so odious—makes you so sick at
heart—that you can't take part.
You can't even passively take
part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon
the wheels, upon the levers, upon
all the apparatus, and you've
got to make it stop. And you've
got to indicate to the people who
run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the
machine will be prevented from
working at all”

“a disturbing echo of incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under" the Governorship of Ronald Reagan and by J. Edgar Hoover against... students and scholars on the Berkeley campus ... during the turbulent years leading up to and including the Vietnam War.

After Maher lost his TV show for saying the 9/11 terrorists were not cowards, I heard him being interviewed by I believe Terri Gross waving the flag about his patriotism and claiming to be half Jewish on his Mother's side.

What secret negotiations did the Nazi government attempt that we don't know about?

The war objective of the Allies was unconditional surrender, which we negotiated with the Japanese to keep the emperor in power. But what of the Germans? Where there no overtures offered for an negotiated peace? There was Rudolph Hess who's mission was covered in secrecy until the day he died.

It would seem implausible that there weren't others.

There are Ben Hecht's allegations in "Perfidy." It would seem that plausible that other negotiations were initiated to end the war.

The Allies negotiated to feed the Greeks during the German occupation and the Allies negotiated an air drop of food to the Netherlands to feed the population at the close of the war.

Certainly Hitler remaining in power would be unacceptable, but unconditional surrender offered no alternative to end a massively destructive war and Holocaust.

‘If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide’ and ‘They [Jews] are a cancer which is liable to spread at any moment.’

I don't see any concerted worldwide effort to get rid of Jews. Since so many of them live in the United States and Europe it would be a difficult undertaking for a Muslim extremist to presume he could carry out or even imagine.

Where will this "cancer" of Jews spread that they aren't or at least weren't before 1948?

It all seems like it is scripted to play to the paranoia of the Pam Gellar crowd.

"What if the choice was either commit minor vandalism with the extra-chunky or succumb to a life of anti-Semitic persecution?"

It makes for a nice story that Spielberg peanut buttered some bully's window and the bully stopped bullying him.

So apparently the bully was so intimidated by the act of peanut buttering windows in the middle of the night that he never bothered Spielberg again. It hardly seems that the "bully" was much of a threat to begin with.

It is also plausible that young Steven was the bully and his mother makes excuses for his behavior.

The sound of the soldiers marching to the scene gave event a certain Orwellian character. I would imagine these soldiers were not very far from the confrontation but they apparently formed up and marched to the sound of a shouting Palestinian in order to provide the desired intimidation.

In the heady days after September 11, and before the invasion of Iraq. Darryl Issa spoke at a World Affairs Council meeting about his vision to remake the Middle East. Issa spoke of a "Marshall Plan" to modernize and rebuild the Middle East.

In the Q&A that followed I stated that Marshall did have a plan for the Middle East which involved a one state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian issue. I went further to state that without addressing the legitimate issues of the Palestinians especially UN 194 which the Palestinians cannot be required to relinquish how can his vision of a Marshall Plan succeed?

Issa looked at me as though he wished I were dead and said he disagreed. Afterwards I went to shake his hand and thank him for coming but he refused to make eye contact with me. Late a Pro-Israel college professor resigned from the local World Affairs Council board because I was not rebuked for asking the question.

It's like the transformation of American society after September 11 and the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. Everyone was wearing camo and "Blackwater" apparel.

Kissinger wrote in his first book that nations become soft without war. Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon are as much about creating a militarized society as foreign adventure. Societies follow the herd mentality.

Once it is put in motion no one can question a War President or Prime Minister.

Steve Klein, the consultant on the film does business with someone he met for an hour and apparently the only things he knows about him is that he is not Israeli and not Jewish.
Where did they meet, the restroom on the interstate?

Certainly the film's intent was to provoke a backlash and Klein points the finger at the Coptic Christians who would only bear the brunt of the retaliation in Egypt. Steve isn't telling the truth.

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